For all of our Resellers who are selling .co.uk domain names, we wanted to let you know about a recent change made by Nominet, the .uk Registry operator.

You may or may not have bumped into this in the past, but until recently, after a .uk domain name expired, the Registry would send a paper invoice to the registrant inviting them to renew the domain name for £80 plus tax (VAT).

This notice mentioned Tucows as the registrar, and it also confusingly invited the registrant to renew with the Registry directly.

On February 4th, 2009, the Registry moved this somewhat puzzling process to email and made some changes to reduce confusion. The Registrant is now contacted by email with details of the specific domain name, its expiry date and the registrar and public URL for the registrar to help the registrant make their renewal. The offer to renew directly with the Registry is now omitted.

This is a minor change, but it is something that both Registrants and our Resellers might find a bit confusing. We wanted to take this opportunity to explain to you what is going on so that you can be ready to handle any inquiries from your customers about these emails.

Nominet has more information about this process on their website.